Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Virtual hosting" in English language version.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help){{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)Circa 1996-1997, the number of distinct IP addresses would have been a good approximation to the number of real sites, since hosting companies would typically allocate an IP address to each site with distinct content, and multiple domain names could point to the IP address being used to serve the same site content. However, with the adoption of HTTP/1.1 virtual hosting, and the availability of load balancing technology it is possible to reliably host a great number of active sites on a single (or relatively few) IP addresses.
Circa 1996-1997, the number of distinct IP addresses would have been a good approximation to the number of real sites, since hosting companies would typically allocate an IP address to each site with distinct content, and multiple domain names could point to the IP address being used to serve the same site content. However, with the adoption of HTTP/1.1 virtual hosting, and the availability of load balancing technology it is possible to reliably host a great number of active sites on a single (or relatively few) IP addresses.